Digging Martinis with Gnossos

I posted the other day about Dave Brubeck, and while I was tempted to comment on the extraordinary sound of Paul Desmond’s alto sax, I thought it more appropriate to focus on Dave. The Desmond sound is instantly recognizable and has been likened to that of a dry martini. But I have to say that when I’m sipping one, I’m reminded as much of old hippies as I am of Paul Desmond.

When I was growing up, I associated martinis with night clubs and Madison Avenue (the latter probably thanks to Mad Magazine), and I assumed that no one but sophisticated urbanites were inclined to drink them. That perception changed when I reached college – not because I was introduced to them but because I became hooked on Richard Fariña’s novel Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, whose hero, Gnossos Pappadopoulis, digs martinis. Birdbath martinis, made with Beefeater gin. A curious preference for a hippie prototype (he also digs grass), but that’s what made Gnossos such a compelling character – admittedly more hipster than hippie, but a forerunner all the same.

The paperback of Been Down So Long came out just as I was starting college, and its scenes of sex and drugs had a lot to do with breaking me out of my straight-laced thinking. (Even the cover was daring for its time.) No rock ’n roll, though: it was set in the 50s, and Gnossos favored jazz, especially by Mose Allison and Miles Davis. (One of my favorite scenes has Gnossos being given last rites for a hangover and muttering, with reference to Miles playing in the background, “More treble, we’re losing the highs.”) It was also about campus protests before there were campus protests, as it was based on one at Cornell concerning co-ed curfews. Throughout the book, the code by which Gnossos lives is detachment – I am invisible, he thinks often. And Exempt. Immunity has been granted to me, for I do not lose my cool – and for me (and I suspect others) the lesson stuck. 

BDSL was a 60s college-age version of Catcher in the Rye. I read it, passed along my copy, bought another, and started the cycle again. Ten years ago, I finally plunked down some big bucks for a first edition.

So why am I mentioning this, other than to embark on another nostalgia trip? Simply because I’m curious whether, 40 years later, there’s a counterpart, a book that captures the essence of a generation and offers a role model (however questionable). Is there a new Gnossos (or a new Holden)? Do kids in their late teens still press books into friends’ hands and say “You’ve gotta read this”? Or have the heroes all gone over to movies and TV? (Was Bobby Dupea a step in this direction?) And if that’s the case, is this a reflection of the “decline of the book”? 

Or just of a directionless culture?